20.06.2022 PAGE 8 IV. CONCLUSION Despite the harsh reality in the Samos CCAC, people continue to hope and dream of a better future. “[My] dream, in my country, is to achieve being a professional football player. I didn’t achieve it but I’m still hoping, if I have my freedom, I will achieve it in my life”, says Koffi*. Prince* told us: “I have many dreams, I need to always have dreams. While coming to Europe, I had a dream in my head – if I obtain my papers I will make a master or a PhD in finance.” This report provides mounting evidence that life behind fences and barbed wire whilst having no access to adequate essential services has a heavy toll on people’s physical and mental wellbeing. “People [are] sick, mentally.” The aim of this project is to highlight the inhumane reality in the Samos CCAC and highlight that closed and securitized facilities are and will never be a safe, humane, and dignified reception solution for people in need of protection. On the one hand, the facility and its increasing restrictions represent an obstacle for its residents to lead a full life. In Prince’s* words, “It’s really hard, you have to be very brave to sustain this situation, because the majority of people are traumatised and leave.” On the other hand, it is also impacting those few asylum seekers and refugees who live in the town of Vathy, such as Koffi*. He says that living in the city instead of the closed facility “has its positives and negatives. It is very positive because I am living in a house, have access to everything. I can go out, I can go and sleep anytime I like. The negative is that I’m alone, always.” While we previously called on all European leaders to stop looking at the “Greek model” of closed and controlled centres as safe and humane reception solutions, the UK has recently opened its first centre based on the model of those implemented in Greece. But the increased use of detention centres and restrictions on asylum seekers’ fundamental rights and freedoms are in stark contrast to Europe’s humane, welcoming and solidarity-based response towards people fleeing Ukraine. In the words of an asylum seeker living on Samos, Greece and Europe should “welcome refugees from Africa, from the Middle East, the same way they welcomed the Ukraine refugees, because nobody is different: we are one.” LIFE IN THE CLOSED CONTROLLED ACCESS CENTRE IN SAMOS